


Ylaipi

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Beer, Conversations, Established Relationship, Hope, M/M, Memories, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:30:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5267945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Do you remember the table he made?” Michael asks, head ducked but eyes lifted, a grin parting wide over big teeth.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“The one that tipped to one side? And Father called it among the greatest of His creations. Nevermind, you know, the heavens. Us. The world, entirely. Nevermind,” Gabriel laughs suddenly, bitterly, “that He didn’t even make the table."</i>
</p><p>The brothers reminisce on Christmas Eve over beer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ylaipi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Omano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omano/gifts).



> For our amazing [Omaano!!!](http://omaano.tumblr.com/) We adore you bb, we hope you enjoy this more quiet scene between the boys.

Jasper’s not a busy town by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s especially quiet on Christmas Eve.

No pick-up trucks rattle by on the road outside, returning from countless lumber yards and sawmills. No kids run down the street, backpacks bouncing heavy with books. All eight-thousand residents are unseen. Tucked away in their homes, glittering with lights laid bright across their roofs, the town is quiet, but for an old Christmas movie flickering black and white on the television set in the corner of the bar. There are lights of blue and white strung along the top of the liquor shelves behind the bar. A sprightly red ribbon, tied into a bow, has been placed atop the register.

“I’m surprised to find you open,” Michael says to the bartender, taking both beers in hand.

“I don’t do Christmas.”

“No?”

“Most Jews don’t,” the man says, and Michael’s brows lift.

“You’re Jewish,” he responds, pleasantly surprised. “In Jasper, Texas.”

“We’re all over the place, pal. Besides, never know when someone’s going to come in wanting a drink. Y’all showed up, right?”

Michael’s smile widens, warmed suddenly by memories of Jerusalem long ago and the proud temple that once stood stoic overseeing the city beneath. Only a wall remains now, but it’s as alive with energy as it ever was, and there is a comfort in seeing a faith persist ceaseless persecutions, horrors and hardship. Of course, the angels who now sit in one of the few booths of this bar were responsible for some portion of that, millenia ago, but the continuation eases away the archangel’s guilt at least in some small part.

“We’ll try to make it worth your while,” he says with a smile, before returning to where his brother sits waiting.

Gabriel looks forlornly out the window, arms crossed on the table worn smooth by countless glasses dragged across it. His fingers tap along with the quiet music in the bar, the only, perhaps, in this entire town now playing Christmas carols. He doesn’t respond when the beer is set before him beyond letting his fingers still, and the rest of AC/DC’s ironically titled song plays out without his deliberate accompaniment.

“Look at them,” he mumbles, not moving his eyes from the window. “Not a single one out. And all for _him_.”

“Hard to look at them, then, isn’t it?” Michael muses, delighted when his miserable joke earns a dry look from his brother. He takes a sip of beer and hums, sucking foam from his upper lip. “They loved him, once. They still do, at least in trappings. What he had to do with all the little electric lights, though, remains a mystery.”

“‘I am the light’, he said. Of the bloody world. ‘Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” Gabriel snorts, and sips his beer in turn. “Jumped-up bloody carpenter is more like it. And not even a very good one.”

“Do you remember the table he made?” Michael asks, head ducked but eyes lifted, a grin parting wide over big teeth.

“The one that tipped to one side? And Father called it among the greatest of His creations. Nevermind, you know, the heavens. Us. The world, entirely. Nevermind,” Gabriel laughs suddenly, bitterly, “that He didn’t even make the table.”

Beneath the table, Michael tilts their legs together, knee against knee, rocking gently to ease his brother to peace again. The bartender pays them no mind, he never does. They’re at distance enough to be unheard but the man has been a friendly - if gruff - and welcome host to them enough times to be unbothered, content to watch the movie on the television, unheard beneath the music that plays heretical across the little dive.

“To be fair,” Michael says, hand uplifted to bid Gabriel listen for a moment at least, “he did more to win them over to our Father than we managed in centuries of decimations.”

“That wasn’t his doing either,” Gabriel replies quietly, but he does let his eyes slip from the world outside, empty and quiet, and to his brother, who sits across from him with foam on his top lip. Gabriel’s lips work for a moment before they purse and he manages to keep his smile at bay. Michael takes the hint enough to draw his tongue over the white foam and smiles at Gabriel instead.

“There are saints days,” he says. “Name days.”

“Saints,” Gabriel agrees. “Not angels.”

“Are you jealous?”

Gabriel laughs, a low and warm thing, and ducks his head to look at his beer, fingers drawing over the condensation there and watching thick drops form and slip to the cheap paper coaster beneath. “I’m confused.”

Michael smiles a little more, settling further into his faux-leather seat to wedge his leg a bit deeper against that of his brother. He pushes his knee against his thigh and rocks it lightly.

“There are groups that keep us in mind,” Michael reminds him. “I’ve brought home the candles that they light in church for us.”

“For you,” Gabriel points out. “All the time, Archangel Michael, Saint Michael - even though you’re not,” he adds with a snort. “You’ve got golden statues to you, slaying -”

He stops. Michael’s gentle movements stop. Both angels still in silence for a moment, the unsaid words echoing deafening between them. Gabriel draws a breath to apologize but the way Michael’s expression shifts does not allow him voice, his gift briefly stripped from him by the only one who can. The muscles beneath Michael’s eyes lift, and his brow creases.

“And that’s what they remember me for,” he says. “That, to the exclusion of everything else.”

Gabriel considers him, brows furrowed and breathing slow, until slowly, deliberately, Michael starts his knee swaying again. Gabriel looks out the window again, after a moment snorting softly and bringing a hand to his hair to push it from his eyes.

“I’m remembered for bringing a message,” he reminds him. “Many a message, over and over, to everyone important enough to make the gospels later. You remember -”

“That was Uriel.”

“No,” Gabriel says, shifting forward to draw his thigh against Michael’s leg. “That was you, who told me to misinform and have three wise men meander to our half-brother with gifts he would never use.”

“There are worse things to be remembered for than a pile of spices,” Michael says, offering a smile as much to ease himself as his brother. “And it was funny,” he adds with a grin. “But honestly, you’ve seen what they have on their trees, haven’t you?”

“Stupid lights and baubles on a pagan shrub.”

“No,” laughs Michael, happy to feel the clouds clear again, when the memory of the lightbringer so darkened them. “On top. A star at times, which you set in place. At other times -”

“An angel. A girl-angel, with golden hair.”

“That is definitely Uriel’s doing,” Michael grins. “Inserting herself everywhere she can. But it’s superficial, the appearance. It’s you that they uphold. You who spoke to Mary in as cautious a way as you could manage about what our Father had been doing, an enormous act of tact on your part.”

“She was terrified,” Gabriel recalls. “Poor thing. But she listened much better than her husband -”

“Gabe.”

“Close enough. There was a woman with a head on her shoulders and a mind for cleverness. I’m surprised there’s so little about her, in the end. And he loved her, all his life. Any meagre money he made went to her.”

Michael smiles, setting an elbow to the table and his cheek against his folded fingers. His brother is rarely sentimental. About his family, occasionally, once in a while about a memory or event that happened that no one could prevent. Rarely, if ever, about their half-brother. Especially over this holiday.

“And it serves Uriel right being atop that bloody tree,” Gabriel adds after a moment, taking up his beer to take a long sip. “They figured out she had a stick up her ass, they just found a proper way to portray it every winter.”

Michael snorts, laughing, into his glass as he holds it between his hands. “Mary got her due,” he finally says, slumping back in his booth again with a wide grin. “She gets ample credit in certain sects. Uriel’s a different story. No one knows they’re influenced by her, but they are. Do you remember -”

“Oh,” Gabriel moans. “Please don’t remind me.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Any of it. All of it. It’s all terrible.”

“The Revelations paintings that had her fingerprints all over them,” Michael murmurs, leaning across the table again. A glance to the bartender ensures they’re in no way being paid attention to - indeed, the man couldn’t care less - and Michael extends a single stray finger to stroke against his brother’s own. “And the lion, beside the throne?”

“She put me in a dress.”

“A long robe.”

Gabriel looks up, eyes narrowed, and feels his expression soften watching his brother grin, delighted, as he does. His cheeks and the tip of his nose are pink from the beer, and the more they have the more he will start to laugh, squirm, reach out and touch.

He is lovely.

He is an idiot.

He is his idiot.

“You know I tried to convince her to have you painted as a weasel,” Gabriel mumbles. “But she wasn’t in the mood that day, so lion you were.”

“I told you they’d fear me as a ferocious beast,” Michael says with no small amount of delight. “With my lion’s ears and the mane you kept cutting off.”

“Kitten ears of cloth, stitched to a cowl, hardly a lion make.”

“So say you,” Michael delights, before his joy holds still, as does his beer, nearing his lips. “A weasel?”

“You get twitchy when people actually pay attention to you,” Gabriel points out, smile crooked. He finishes his beer and sets a hand to the table - Michael’s conveniently just beneath his palm - to push himself up and buy them another round.

The bartender only spares him a glance before taking down two more glasses to fill for them. He will keep the bar open as long as there are patrons in it, he hardly cares for whatever the country declares to be a religious occasion. It doesn’t apply to him. Gabriel goes to pay and the man waves him off. Without a word, they part again, and the archangel returns to set the new glass before his brother.

“You also tend to get brutally excited about soft things and want to immediately hoard them into a nest.”

Michael appears aghast at this, eyes wide and hand against his chest. “How else should one nest, but in a pile of soft things?”

“One shouldn’t nest,” Gabriel tells him, “when they’re the sword of God Himself.”

“Nonsense,” declares Michael, finishing his first beer and slipping it aside to gather the next close to him. It leaves a trail of condensation across the table, through which he immediately smears his finger in little waves. “Should I sheathe myself then? Buried deep in -”

He stops, watching Gabriel’s brow lift, and a snort is followed quickly by a grin.

His brother blinks, as though accepting that as an appropriate apology and response. Michael laughs again, delighted, and sets his chin upon folded hands as he watches his brother. Around them, in the bar, are other angels. Some here to oversee, others here simply to escape the Christmas Spirit that seems to stalk them all as though it were actually manifested physically, with so many people believing in it.

A tulpa.

They weren’t wrong, those Tibetan monks.

“He never liked this level of pomp,” Gabriel remarks after a while. “Much as we made fun with him with the ridiculous gifts that came his way, he wasn’t huge on ceremony.”

Michael hums, tilting a gaze towards the window beside them, and the quiet town outside it. “No,” he agrees. “To his credit, nevermind being the son of our Father, he was humble. Kind. He sought to lift those who could not lift themselves. Those who the rulers of the time would have kept downtrodden.”

“You like it,” Gabriel says. “This holiday.”

Without argument, Michael shrugs, twining his fingers with his brother’s where they lay together on the table. “There are worse,” he says. “It brings people together, to share time. Gifts. Meals. He would have liked that, I think. Despite being a miserable carpenter, he had a generosity of spirit. It suits him, the pagan trees notwithstanding.”

“I think he would have appreciated the irony in that,” Gabriel replies, smiling. “All-inclusive. Considering our family dinners, he did very well being the only half-sibling.”

“We weren’t cruel to him,” Michael muses, and Gabriel shakes his head. 

“Hardly more than we were to each other. He took a lot into stride. Clever and quiet and not deserving of the weight Father put on him.”

“No,” Michael agrees, taking another long swig before settling again, cheek against his folded arms. “We were spoiled, you and I and the other twins.”

“You think so?”

“We had a great deal expected of us,” says Michael, “but we were given tools to see it through. Gifts. Other angels at our backs. We weren’t left to wander the desert alone. We weren’t given the task of delivering His word to humanity, and at the cost that’s come of it in all the centuries since. What happened to him -”

“Michael.”

“What happened to him was cruel,” Michael says, sitting up again to drink his beer, fingers folding together before him, before they’re loosed by Gabriel. He allows it, watching as his twin threads their fingers together. They squeeze. “It was as unfair as how He treated -”

“Michael, don’t.”

“Lucifer,” whispers Michael. “Neither of them were treated kindly. Neither of them treated justly.”

“Both of them remembered,” Gabriel offers, small consolation though it is. Of all of the mentions in the Bible, in all the Gospels, in stories told again and again, the names are recurring, they are said with awe and hatred and wonder, they are talked of. “Being forgotten would have been a crueler fate.”

Michael doesn’t argue that. Their family, dysfunctional and disparate as they are, have lived long in mankind’s history, and risen to prominence above countless other pantheons that have been forgotten. Their brother, cast down but yet feared - and revered, in some circles - for his independence and bravery. Their half-brother, idolized, for his kindness and generosity of heart. And they themselves, upheld as emblems - archetypes - of strength and victory.

There are crueler fates indeed, than being remembered in a not-entirely factual way.

He sits back slowly into his booth, but keeps their fingers joined. He finishes his beer in one long, gulping swallow, and sets the glass aside. It isn’t the easiest day of the year for them, and for Gabriel in particular, despite being attached at least somewhat to the ostensible worship that should occur on a day now given more to consumerism. Long centuries have been spent in envy of their half-brother, favored by their Father as His best and brightest.

“Would that he were still here,” Michael finally says. “We could invite him out for drinks.”

“He’d like this place,” his brother agrees, turning his eyes to the bar again, where the man behind it polishes glasses absently and regards the television, which now shows the news. Around them, soft rock plays as before, though now the lyrics are hardly as scandalous as before. The bartender pays them no mind. “He’d comment on the carpentry.”

“Stop.”

“He appreciated good things, you have to give him that,”

Michael laughs, and Gabe turns to him with a smile, eyes narrowed with it. Whatever disagreements they ever had as family, whatever personal envy or displeasure they held with each other, there was never anything that could have had them hate their half-brother.

Nothing at all.

Both remember, vividly, the day word came down the ranks of what was to occur. Gabriel was stoic, silent at the news. Michael was furious. He brought forth the name of their cast-out brother in his rage; he threatened to lead a revolt to stop what their Father declared would come to pass against Jesus. He voiced these thoughts only to Gabriel, who muffled him with a hand against his mouth and a kiss pressed to the back of his hand. He was shaking, as he did, and he said to Michael that he would hold his tongue or Gabriel would take it from him.

Their family lost too many already, and Gabriel would not allow his twin to be cast down to the darkness, too.

It was a hideous thing, to bring into their world a man of mortal birth and treat him as if he had the strength of angels. But to his credit, he took his martyrdom as their Father directed. With grace and pride, he went to his crucifixion. And he wept, and Michael tore away from Gabriel’s embrace only to find himself snared close again. Gabriel kept Michael from going to their half-brother to save him. Gabriel kept Michael from the pit to which he’d surely have been banished had he intervened.

A sharp breath draws Michael back to the moment, and the click of another glass against the table pulls his attention back to Gabriel when he seats himself again.

“Do not,” Gabriel says. “Do not slip into those thoughts now. It’s bad enough we’ve tawdry carols to hear and garish gifts to see. It was his birthday.”

“Not really,” Michael answers.

“Well, no. But it’s what they use to celebrate his birth. You don’t remember when it actually happened any better than I do.”

“I tried to ignore it,” Michael admits, amused. He circles the glass with sleek fingers and lifts it, spilling a little foam across his hand. “To him, then. To all our family, who cannot be here.”

“To those still watching,” Gabriel agrees, lifting his own. They drink, eyes narrowed over the foam until it sinks low enough that they can see each other through the wobbling mess that is the glasses they drink from.

Outside it is dark as coal, stars slowly making their way to the sky one by one, lighting that canvas up as these silly lights do on the trees people covet this time of year. There is a strange peace to it all, a soothing reminder. Gabriel sets his beer down unfinished and draws his fingers over his lips to wipe them dry.

“Shall we?”

“Shall we what?” Michael asks, without hesitation. His eyes narrow in feline pleasure, and his smile spreads wide.

“Shall we go,” Gabriel intones. “Elsewhere.”

“For what purpose?”

“To allow that man some time to close his bar before he goes to rest,” Gabriel says, motioning to the barman who no longer has the television on, and who regards the last straggling patrons of his bar with bland indifference.

“Liar,” Michael snorts, lifting his glass to the bartender before finishing the last half of it all at once.

Still, he slips from the booth in inches, dragging himself out slowly, as if he weren’t in the body of an athletic young human, as if he weren’t - within that body - the sword of God Himself. He continues to the bar, and takes from his wallet a sheaf of earthly money. Sifting through euros and riyal, rupee and renbinmi, he finds his American dollars and takes out a dozen of the bills, setting them to the counter.

“It’s three bucks a beer,” the man says, regarding the money with an arched brow. Michael glances at the denominations quickly, and with a shrug, pockets his wallet.

“ _Chag Urim Sameach_ ,” Michael says with a crooked smile, the Hebrew falling readily from his tongue despite all the years since he’s spoken it. “For staying open for those of us with less common practices.”

The man grunts, regarding the pink-cheeked young man and nods, head remaining inclined a moment longer than necessary, before he takes the money and returns to cleaning his bar. Michael turns away with a smile, waltzing past Gabriel towards the door and holding it open for his twin with his hip.

Outside, it’s cold, dark entirely but for the lights that hang from lampposts and those that illuminate the closed and barred windows of usually bustling shops. It is quiet here, little activity, and strangely peaceful for it. A place usually filled with people now silent, but not for tragedy or pain, but for a gathering of kindness and celebration and remembrance.

Private kindnesses and genuine prayers.

Gabriel sighs and watches a cloud of his breath dissipate into the air around them, vanishing up into the stars. He regards them a moment, tilts his head, and shifts his shoulders just barely when Michael comes close enough to lean against him. They both watch the sky, before Michael noses behind Gabriel’s ear and the other smiles.

“It’ll snow soon.”

“Do you think?”

“This year,” Gabriel says. Michael doesn’t question him, he doesn’t do anything but stand with him and wait. Moments and moments, breaths and dissipating clouds, and then slowly, almost imperceptibly, tiny white specks begin to fall.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Ylaipi** tomorrow's snow
> 
> (More awesome snow words [here](http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html))


End file.
